Tag: liberal democracy

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Constitutional Development Mediawatch

Blasphemy the redundant

blasphemy_akkuzaThe first edition of Charlie Hebdo since the unfortunate events of last week is out tomorrow. The world has been given a preview of the front page which depicts a tearful prophet holding up a placard with the “Je suis Charlie” slogan. The background is in green – the colour of Islam – and the title is “All is forgiven”. The plan is to distribute the special 16 page edition (3 million copies are being printed) in at least 25 countries. It has been translated into four languages, including Arabic.

There is still a major problem though. To many muslims the mere depiction of the prophet is blasphemous. Charlie Hebdo’s irreverent treatment may be shielded from blasphemy laws in most of France (see next paragraph why most and not all) but when it tries to go worldwide in places such as India the issue of blasphemy might be raised all over again.

In the Alsace-Lorraine region they have a minor problem. On paper, blasphemy is still illegal under an article inherited from the German Criminal Code of 1871 when the region was transferred from Germany to France in 1918. I say on paper because when the League for the Justice defence of Muslims tried to have the law applied before a French court the court declared that the blasphemy law had become redundant due to “desuetude” which in layman terms means non-use for a very long time.

The truth is that outside the worlds where sharia or religious laws infiltrate or are one with secular laws, there is no place for a law on blasphemy. It is redundant. This applies all the more strongly in most liberal democracies where the basic charter of fundamental rights or variants thereof are applicable. Just before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo a group of representatives of the major religions (curiously the word “cultes” is used in French) had petitioned Paris to abrogate what the Archbishop of Strasbourg described as “an obsolete law”.

Blasphemy is inherently inapplicable in a secular state. The difficulties abound especially when it comes to the forces of law and order who are supposed to perform on the spot assessments of what could or could not be blasphemous in order to eventually effect an arrest. Blasphemy is in fact not restricted to one religious belief by definition (even the Maltese law on blasphemy that subsists to this day extends protection to all approved religons). So how on earth can your average policeman, called upon to intervene on a supposed commission of an act of blasphemy , assess the situation without being extremely well versed in the tenets of each and every religion which could be offended?

In truth the issue of offense  – which is the other side of the coin of the freedom of expression and which could constitute the barrier or eventual limit to such expression – is sufficiently treated and dealt with in other, wider provisions that deal with that very freedom of expression. Blasphemy is redundant, useless and archaic.

The other problem faced by  Western Liberal Democracies (my capitals) is that they must be able to explain the register of rights and duties that are expected of citizens wanting to partake of their civilisation and society. These rights and duties are codified in rules that form the backbone of society and that everyone is expected to abide by. The rules are enacted by representatives of the people with the sovereign will  entrusted unto them in open elections. They are applied by the executive branch and interpreted by the judiciary. This civic process ensures that we live in a system of rule of law with clearly defined rights and protection. Cives Europaeus Summus ut Liberi Esse Possimus – we are citizens of Europe (read Western Liberal Democracy) and thus we are free.

In a Western Liberal Democracy you do not take up arms and kill somebody who has insulted you or your beliefs. You react using the tools, rights and laws that are as accessible to you as they are to others. That is what is meant by integration too. You can be a fanatical muslim, an orthodox christian or one of those insufferable atheists pouncing on anything religious at any opportunity. You are expected to behave like a model citizen in order to integrate in the society that welcomes all and gives them a myriad of freedoms so long as they do not hurt others.

It’s simple really. A basic set of tenets that both Yeshua of Nazareth and Mohamet might have subscribed to. It is a society that allows you to be strong in your beliefs while respecting those of others – no matter how irreverent they may seem in your eyes.

Ours is a society where to resort to violence, bullying or savagery in order to impose one’s views is abhorred. In fact it is considered blasphemous.

#jesuisciveseuropaeus

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Values

Hagi’s Brave New World

In 1994 we took to watching some of the World Cup matches at La Grotta nightclub in Xlendi. I don’t remember whether the Romania v. Argentina fixture was late enough to be broadcast direct during clubbing hours or whether it was the repeat of the goals on Eurosport that we watched while dancing to the latest tunes. What I do remember is the magnificent performance of Gheorghe Hagi and Co and how they outshone the Argentinians with some of the best football of the tournament. The second Romanian goal, skillfully envisioned by Hagi and masterfully executed by Dumitrescu remains one of the classics of the tournament – as will the whole Romanian team that would go on to lose its nerve against a cynical Sweden in the quarter-final.

An interview in French sport magazine So Foot with the mastermind behind that team brought these memories of football and clubbing back to my mind. Hagi remains an institution in Romanian football history and nobody since has shone the way he had in the mid-nineties. Not even the meteoric Adrian Mutu. The interview might have struck me for many an insight that Hagi had about football in his heyday, about his moves from Madrid to Brescia to Barcelona, and about how his great Steaua succumbed to a physical Milan in a pre-Champions League final but what really struck me is the sense of saudade that Hagi seems to feel for the communist system that produced his team of greats.

The 1994 national team was a product of Ceausescu’s Romania – a project that had been selected from the villages and towns of the Carpathians and centred around Bucharest’s two dominant teams : Steaua and Dinamo. Plucked away from their regional haunts, different generations of players were disciplined into one system in central Romania and learnt to play together, to live football together and go through an educational system together. From Prunea to Belodedici to Munteanu to Dumitrescu, they all pased through a strict “Eastern” development system that we now only know to relate to the Communist heavy handed “discipline”.

We’ve all heard stories about the pumped East European women for the Olympics. Stories abound about how the successful football teams from behind the Iron Curtain were little more than playthings of the different secret services and police. Descriptions of such systems are normally painted with brushstrokes of oppression, dehumanisation and deprivation of basic rights. Yet here was Hagi expressing a nostalgia for those times and obviously pining for those days when the communist machine made footballing men out of undisciplined boys. There is something about this streak of nostalgia that cannot be ignored. Obviously this is not an appeal for the return of communist regimes and their dark methods of “preparation” but one does have to ask whether the moral fibre of the golden teams such as Hagi’s Romania can ever be replicated again.

This was Hagi who would quit Madrid for Brescia simply to play under the guidance of one of his gurus (Mircea Lucescu) prior to returning to Barcelona (where he played with – hold your breath and kneel down – Stoichkov and Romario). He may have had a fiery character but he did not break down to the vices and greed that seem to be so common with today’s footballers. Did I hear you say Mutu?

In an awkward twist of serendipitous reading I switched to this week’s Economist to find two articles about Raul Castro’s managed shift from Communism to a sort of free trade. The byword in Cuba seems to be to allow small businesses to work but just about that. The government still seems to be intent on ensuring that nobody gets “too rich”. For how long that can be controlled is anybody’s guess. In the meantime I understood why accounts by recent visitors to Cuba jarred so much with my own first-hand witness of Cuba in 2006 (just before Raul came into power). I remember being impressed by the lack of any free-market activity but also by the good-naturedness of the people.

True, there was an in-your-face lack of materialism and absolutely no familiar reference points for anyone coming from a liberal democrat background. But there was also an inexplicable joie de vivre that you could not read about in international reports. It was almost as though the resourcefulness of the people compensated for the limitations imposed by an oppressive regime. It was a contradiction that was hard to swallow. Here was a people who fail on many standards of the liberal democrat scale but then their cultural, health, educational and sporting values shot through the limit. Deprived of the outlets of senseless materialism the Cuban people did what they could do best – improvised and worked on other values.

Is this what Hagi misses? A sense of disciplined approach? Will Cuba produce its Sotomayor’s and little sporting miracles when the barriers to free market and laissez-fairism fall? I don’t have the answer to that one but for a few moments just savour the magic of the other boys in gold who almost conquered the world back in 1994.

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Constitutional Development Mediawatch Politics

Zombie democracy revisited

One of the Economist’s leaders this week is entitled “Zombie democracy” and essentially discusses the concept of majoritarianism. Modern democratic governments are elected by popular suffrage and are formed on the basis of majority rule (cue the discussion on representation, majority government and coalitions). Once an election is over it is assumed that the party obtaining the majority of support will govern. Of course the essence of liberal democracy does not stop there. There are in place numerous institutional and systemic checks and balances to ensure that the government does not get too drunk with power. At least in theory this should work.

In Malta we have recently segued from a government that enjoyed a relative majority to one that enjoys a gulf of majority – at least poll wise. the first hundred days of Muscat’s government have betrayed an arrogant confidence that is cushioned by the implied thought that the massive majority cannot be wrong. Can it?

When last Thursday I voiced my agreement with what Caruana Galizia had to say on Simon Busuttil’s statement that “36,000 people cannot be wrong” I provoked quite a discussion on facebook. For the record here is the clip from Caruana Galizia’s article on the Indy:

Simon Busuttil said a few days ago at a party event that “36,000 people can’t be wrong”. Of course they can. A hundred thousand people can be wrong; a hundred million can be wrong. Rightness and wrongness do not derive from popularity of belief or opinion. To correlate whether people are right or wrong to how many people did or think the same way is a logical fallacy. Some of them already know they were wrong. They are able to see it, some even to admit it.

Do elections really give you an idea of what is wrong or right? Of who is wrong or right? Votes are won (or “bought“) for many different reasons and more often than not being right has little or nothing to do with it. A campaign such as the Taghna Lkoll campaign can act as an opiate for a large number of people and once it is combined with the accumulation of disgruntlement at the incumbent it is a sure formula for success at the polls. Alas it has little to do with that formula being a formula for success at good democratic government.

The success at the polls projected TaghnaLkoll to the dizzy heights of power and within the first hundred days we have a clear picture that the hopes of the voters were not to be matched. The latest dismal move is the dismantlement of a diplomatic set-up in order to make way for lackeys, travel consultants and comperes to be the face of Malta abroad. Also the earliest cabinet reshuffle in history was the result of Labour not having stuck to its original position (separate ministries for justice and home affairs). The musical chairs in cabinet is all about keeping friends close and enemies closer. It’s obvious. Power broking for the sake of power broking is what is going on with no place left for the national interest. Add to that the not too transparent dealings with the Chinese government and what you get is a Joseph Muscat government bulldozering over any semblance of liberal democrat checks and balances.

Here’s the Economist on how this happens:

“BUT I’ve won three elections!” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s embattled prime minister, growls at his critics. On the face of it, his case is compelling: surely, many people in Turkey and beyond would agree, popularly elected leaders can govern as they please? That’s what democracy means. Well, no. Majoritarianism—the credo of an expanding group of elected but autocratic rulers around the world, which holds that electoral might always makes you right—is not true democracy, even if, on the face of it, the two things look alike. It is worth explaining why.

The solution is in the mind of the politicians themselves. Gonzi’s government did cause much damage to the already flawed concept of democracy that existed in the popular mindset. The clinging to the seat of power was not an educational step forward and sowed the seeds for the abuse of democracy by Muscat and the TaghnaLkoll crowd. As his government became weaker and weaker Gonzi clung to the relative majority in parliament and played the actors sufficiently to last the whole legislature. At times it takes a conscious step in the mind of leaders themselves to recognise the limits that are accorded to majoritarian power – again the Economist:

Beyond documents and institutions, the difference between crass majoritarianism and democracy resides in the heads of the mighty. Democrats have a bedrock understanding that the minority (or often majority) who did not vote for them are as much citizens of their country as those who did, and are entitled to a respectful hearing; and that a leader’s job is to deliberate and act in the national interests, not just those of his supporters.

This leader could have been written for Muscat. Instead the Economist is probably still not alerted to the goings on in the European Union’s smallest member so it uses Erdogan, Lukashenko and Hungary’s Orban as examples. The adaptation of these leaders to democracy has been simply to ensure that come election time they get that crucial bulk of votes that puts them into the driving seat for the next legislature. Practices to obtain such votes may be illegal (vote-buying, vote-rigging) or borderline legal (jobs, amnesties promised). In time we have seen how even parties in the more classical of democracies have morphed into election winning machines that have no clue how to make use of power democratically once elected. They groom the zombies to vote them into power… then stick to it with no regard for the wider community. The Economist concludes:

The basic idea of a democracy is that the voters should pick a government, which rules as it chooses until they see fit to chuck it out. But although voting is an important democratic right, it is not the only one. And winning an election does not entitle a leader to disregard all checks on his power. The majoritarian world view espoused by Mr Erdogan and leaders of his ilk is a kind of zombie democracy. It has the outward shape of the real thing, but it lacks the heart.